


One Last Kiss (The Final Storm Remix)

by Redrikki



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Remix, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-09-28 22:24:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20433446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redrikki/pseuds/Redrikki
Summary: You never forget your first kiss with your nemesis. Dottie won't forget her last either. At Howard Stark's funeral, she puts a few things in the ground.





	One Last Kiss (The Final Storm Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Wavesinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/gifts).
  * Inspired by [After The Storm](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17762894) by [The_Wavesinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/pseuds/The_Wavesinger). 

They say you never forgot your first. First kiss. First nemesis. First kiss with your nemesis. Dottie would never forget the way Peggy’s expression had morphed from shock to recognition before she slipped into unconsciousness. That was the moment they went from merely being opponents in a wider geopolitical conflict to something so much more.

The church was packed when Dottie finally slipped in ten minutes late to Howard Stark’s funeral. The place was a black sea of politicians, generals, and businessmen. One good bomb or a spritz of Midnight Oil and she could singlehandedly destroy the American military-industrial complex, but she wasn’t here for that. No, she was here to pay her respects. 

Howard Stark had been the worst sort of capitalist pig and a mediocre lay, but without him, Dottie and Peggy might never have met. It was possible they might have encountered each other on some later caper, but they wouldn’t have been Dottie and Peggy. They would have been Peggy and some other woman entirely. The Red Room had trained her to shed aliases like a snake sheds its skin, but, nearly 50 years later, she couldn’t shake being Dottie any more than she could shake the feel of Peggy’s lips against hers.

She’d spotted the other woman seated solemnly a few rows behind Stark’s orphaned brat when she’d first come in, but the real question was if Peggy had seen her. Twenty years ago there would have been no dout, but her old friend had been missing so much lately. All those plots and mergers and murders happening right under her nose. Agent Peggy Carter of the SSR would have sniffed them out in a heartbeat, but Director Carter’s desk job had made her soft. If she didn’t wise up, it might make her dead. 

Dottie fell in beside the other woman as she made her way from the gravesite, the snow crunching underfoot. “Hello, Peggy.”

Peggy actually startled at the sound of her voice like a complete amateur. “What—” She whipped her head around to stare at Dottie in open-mouthed shock. It seemed she hadn’t noticed her at the church after all. How disappointing. 

“Did you miss me, Peg?” There was a time when they’d been constantly looking over their shoulders for each other. Did Peggy miss those days as much as she did?

Peggy’s face crumpled for an instant before she squared her shoulders and pulled herself together. “Wouldn’t have thought to see you here,” she said tightly. 

Dottie shrugged. It had certainly been awhile. “Ah, well, I had a funeral to go to. A friend of a—someone I know.”  
“I thought you didn’t like Howard,” Peggy said.

“Now when did I say that?” 

Peggy shot her a look and Dottie sighed. “Alright, fine.” She supposed she’d more implied it with all the hitting and kidnapping and attempted murder. “Though—I didn’t mind him, you know. He was interesting. But if it was just him I wouldn’t have come.”

“What, you have a mission that involves me again? After all this time?” Was that excitement in her voice, or just fear?

“No,” Dottie said and stepped in to claim a kiss as deep and passionate as their first. Peggy was a little breathless when she pulled away, but no one fainted this time around. 

“Come on, Peg. Let’s go get something to eat.” 

Dottie pressed against her as they walked through the cemetery, arm in arm like school girls, their breath rising like smoke in the cold December air. 

The diner they settled on reminded Dottie so strongly of the old automat she half expected Angie to come and take their order. It was some other girl who took it though, one with a massive bow of bangs practically cemented into place with hairspray. Dottie ordered her usual (coffee, black no sugar), while Peggy ordered Ceylon tea with milk. That was new, like the lines on her face and the gray in her hair was new. Dottie was well aware of her own wrinkles, but it was jarring seeing them on her old friend, even if it had been fifteen years since their last encounter. They’d all be joining Stark in the ground at this rate.

“I’m sorry about Howard,” Dottie said. “I really am.” He and his wife would still both be alive if he hadn’t felt the need to recreate Erskine’s serum. You’d think after all these years, he would have learned that some things were better left unmade.

Peggy sighed over the rim of her teacup. She looked tired in a way that not even a month’s worth of good nights’ sleep would fix. “It’s—it was just me and him for a long time, you know, after Steve. Well, there was never really an after Steve for him, but. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Dottie said, blowing on her coffee. Nearly fifty years after Dr. Fennhoff used Steve Rogers’ memory to make Stark gas Times Square and the man had still been so desperate to get him back he’d tried to make him all over again. Like it was the serum that had made Rogers worth having and not the other way around. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s just—a car accident.” Peggy’s hand shook. She set her cup down on her saucer with almost exaggerated care before she could spill her tea. “Wasn’t exactly the way I imagined it. We have so many enemies, the both of us, and we’re not young, but it’s a car accident that kills him and Maria.”

“Strange, with all your enemies,” Dottie said as pointedly as possible. Their gum-chewing, big-haired waitress probably wasn’t listening in, but she had little doubt that someone was and she wanted Peggy to live. Not to win, necessarily, but to survive the coming storm. 

“Strange,” Peggy echoed and Dottie could practically see the gears turning behind her eyes. They were rusty, of course, like the rest of her, but she’d finally got them working.

For a split second, Dottie’s let her shoulders slump with relief before she shook her head, short and sharp. “Sorry, I’m seeing ghosts these days.” She smiled, pouring on the old charm, and was pleased when Peggy smiled back. “I did come here for you, though.”

“I know. We seem to keep coming back, don’t we,” Peggy said, taking up her tea again. 

“We sure as hell do,” Dottie said with a laugh as they launched into the usual reminiscence of their old games of cat and mouse and near fatal stabbings. 

Ah, the good old days. They’d had fun back then. When had this stopped being fun? When Peggy settled behind her cushy desk? When Dottie learned that Hydra had infiltrated both Leviathan and S.H.I.E.L.D., making the whole concept of sides completely superfluous? Or was it the moment she watched any semblance of consciousness or will drain from the Winter Soldier’s eyes and realized just what sort of operatives her new masters would prefer?

She reached out to take Peggy’s free hand and gently stroke across the back of her knuckles. The other woman hadn’t balked at the kiss back in the cemetery, but this, it seems, was too much for her. “Dottie,” she said and started to pull back.

Dottie tightened her grip and shook her head. “Don’t,” she said desperately. “Let’s just enjoy the moment, shall we?”

Because this was going to be the last moment they’d have. The man who had brought them together was dead and, on the other side of the world, the Soviet Union was falling apart. The Red Room and all of its assets, including her, would soon be up for grabs and then there was Stark’s serum to consider. What good was an old, ordinary woman when Stark Industries had given them better living through chemistry? She was obsolete and knew too much. Once the dust cleared, she would not be allowed to live.

Dottie had believed in and been willing to die for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but that country was gone and she’d be damned if she was going to just let Hydra take her out. She was leaving the game now, on her own terms. To do that, Dottie Underwood, the woman who couldn’t let go of the memory of Peggy Carter’s kiss, needed to die.

She tried to memorize every detail as she watched Peggy slowly drink her tea. The feel of her hand in hers. The way the light shown off the silver strands in her dark hair. The lip stick stains she left on her cup. She’d changed her brand. They’d both changed so much.

At length, Peggy finished her tea and set the cup firmly down. It hit the saucer with a small click as final as the sound of dirt hitting Howard Stark’s coffin. “Dottie,” Peggy said, quietly, almost regretfully. 

“I know,” Dottie said, relinquishing the other woman’s hand. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t live in the past any more than Howard could. Not if she wanted to make it through the new year alive.

The got up together and walked out, arms linked, side by side. It had started to snow again and the flakes gathered on their eyelashes like tears. Dottie didn’t say I love you and she didn’t say goodbye. She just poured every ounce of feeling into one last kiss and left Dottie Underwood to blow away in the cold December wind.

**Author's Note:**

> Howard Stark died on December 16, 1991. The Soviet Union voted itself out of existence on December 26, 1991 after months of turmoil including coups, counter-coups, and breakaway republics.


End file.
